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Open-source contribution

DAGMC

Contributions to DAGMC, which lets particle transport codes read CAD geometry directly instead of a hand-converted tessellation.

Role
Open-source contributor
Period
2023 — present
DAGMC screenshot

The problem

Coupling a CAD model to a transport code normally means exporting geometry in a neutral format and converting it, which loses information and adds a slow, brittle step to every modelling iteration.

The approach

DAGMC removes that conversion step by teaching transport codes to read CAD B-rep geometry directly. My contributions focused on the parts of that pipeline that users touch first: build integration and the tooling around the geometry representation.

The project sits at the boundary between two domains — CAD kernels and Monte Carlo physics — so the work is mostly about making two very different assumptions about geometry agree with each other.

Engineering highlights

  • Geometry without the conversion tax

    Removing the CAD-to-neutral-format step eliminates a whole class of “the model looks right but the mesh does not” bugs.

  • Two domains, one interface

    CAD kernels and transport codes disagree about tolerances, orientation and units by default. Agreeing on those explicitly is most of the work.

At a glance

Project
Direct Accelerated Geometry Monte Carlo
Role
Contributor

Stack

  • C++
  • MOAB
  • OpenMC
  • CMake